A prominent Chinese rights lawyer whose trial is drawing near on charges of inciting ethnic hatred and provoking trouble has been denied access to lawyers for nearly a month, his wife and one of his attorneys said Monday.

Meng Qun, wife of Pu Zhiqiang, raised the concern in an open letter addressed to the leadership of the Beijing detention center where her husband is being held, urging authorities to honor China's own rules to allow Pu access to lawyers.

One of Pu's attorneys, Shang Baojun, confirmed that Pu last met his lawyers on June 23 and verified the authenticity of Meng's letter.

Pu is widely believed to be politically persecuted amid Beijing's crackdown on civil society. The charges stem from his online posts that questioned China's ethnic policies in the wake of deadly violence involving ethnic minority Uighurs, and others that mocked several political figures.

He was taken away in May 2014 and was indicted on May 15 this year, after one year in detention.

Shang said he expects a Beijing court to hold Pu's trial soon, because by law Chinese courts have three months from the indictment to hold a trial and issue a verdict, but the authorities have not yet announced a date.

The Illinois Supreme Court has denied a request by state officials to decide the issue of paying government workers during the budget crisis.

The high court made no comment Friday in rejecting the plea by Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Madigan sought intervention because two separate courts ruled opposite ways last week on pay for 64,500 employees.

A Cook County judge ruled it would be illegal to pay most of them. But an appellate court reversed that decision Friday and sent it back for additional arguments.

A St. Clair County judge decreed it would violate the Constitution not to pay them.

State Comptroller Leslie Munger began paying workers this week.

A new fiscal year began July 1 but Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislative Democrats can't agree on a spending plan.

The Texas Court of Criminal of Appeals halted the scheduled lethal injection of Clifton Lamar Williams until questions about some incorrect testimony at his 2006 trial can be resolved.

Williams, 31, had faced execution Thursday evening for the killing of Cecelia Schneider of Tyler, about 85 miles east of Dallas. Investigators determined she had been beaten and stabbed before her body and her bed were set on fire.

In a brief order, the court agreed to return the case to the trial court in Tyler to review an appeal from Williams' attorneys. They want to examine whether incorrect FBI statistics regarding DNA probabilities in population estimates cited by witnesses could have affected the outcome of Williams' trial.

"We need time to look at this," said Seth Kretzer, one of Williams' lawyers. "No way we can investigate this in five hours.

"It requires some time, and the CCA saw that."

The Texas Department of Public Safety sent a notice June 30 that the FBI-developed population database used by the crime lab in Texas and other states had errors for calculating DNA match statistics in criminal investigations. The Texas Attorney General's Office informed Williams' attorneys of the discrepancy on Wednesday.

Prosecutors in Tyler, in Smith County, had opposed Williams' appeal for a reprieve, telling the appeals court the state police agency insisted that corrected figures would have no impact. Williams is black, and prosecutors said the probability of another black person with the same DNA profile found in Schneider's missing car was one in 40 sextillion. Jurors in 2006 were told the probability was one in 43 sextillion. A sextillion is defined as a 1 followed by 21 zeros.

A federal law crafted to fight the mob is giving marijuana opponents a new strategy in their battle to stop the expanding industry: racketeering lawsuits.

A Colorado pot shop recently closed after a Washington-based group opposed to legal marijuana sued not just the pot shop but a laundry list of firms doing business with it — from its landlord and accountant to the Iowa bonding company guaranteeing its tax payments. One by one, many of the defendants agreed to stop doing business with Medical Marijuana of the Rockies, until the mountain shop closed its doors and had to sell off its pot at fire-sale prices.

With another lawsuit pending in southern Colorado, the cases represent a new approach to fighting marijuana. If the federal government won't stop its expansion, pot opponents say, federal racketeering lawsuits could. Marijuana may be legal under state law, but federal drug law still considers any marijuana business organized crime.

"It is still illegal to cultivate, sell or possess marijuana under federal law," said Brian Barnes, lawyer for Safe Streets Alliance, a Washington-based anti-crime group that brought the lawsuits on behalf of neighbors of the two Colorado pot businesses.

The United Arab Emirates on Monday put to death a woman with links to Islamic extremists who was convicted of murdering an American teacher with a butcher knife in an upscale Abu Dhabi mall.

The execution, carried out just two weeks after the country's top court delivered a guilty verdict, marked a swift end to a case that has rattled this Western-allied Gulf country, where violent crime is rare.

The Federal Supreme Court convicted Alaa Bader Abdullah al-Hashemi, a 30-year-old Emirati mother of six, of deliberately murdering 47-year-old schoolteacher Ibolya Ryan in a mall restroom stall on the capital's upscale Reem Island.

Authorities say the killer, shrouded in a traditional black garment and veil, later planted a homemade bomb outside the home of another American. It failed to explode.

Al-Hashemi also was found guilty of sending money to al-Qaida in Yemen and of publishing information aimed at harming the reputation of the Emirates, a seven-state federation that also includes the commercial hub of Dubai.

The verdict was not eligible for appeal.

Ahmed al-Dhanhani, attorney general for the state security prosecution, told state news agency WAM that al-Hashemi was executed Monday morning following the approval of the president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Ryan had three children and had been living in Abu Dhabi with her 11 year-old twins. She previously worked at Palmer Elementary School in Denver.

Executions are rare in the Emirates, and are typically carried out using firing squads.

The federal health care law doesn't infringe on the religious freedom of faith-based nonprofit organizations that object to covering birth control in employee health plans, a federal appeals court in Denver ruled Tuesday.

The case involves a group of Colorado nuns and four Christian colleges in Oklahoma.

Religious groups are already exempt from covering contraceptives. But the plaintiffs argued that the exemption doesn't go far enough because they must sign away the coverage to another party, making them feel complicit in providing the contraceptives.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The judges wrote that the law with the exemption does not burden the exercise of religion.

"Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of plaintiffs' beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme ... does not substantially burden their religious exercise," the three-judge panel wrote.

The same court ruled in 2013 that for-profit companies can join the exempted religious organizations and not provide the contraceptives. The U.S. Supreme Court later agreed with the 10th Circuit in the case brought by the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain.